The present invention relates to a process and to an apparatus for the further conveyance of sheet-like articles, such as printed products, arriving in an imbricated stream according to the preamble of claims 1 and 5, respectively.
A process and an apparatus of this type are know from U.S. Pat. No. 4,953,847.
Printed products arranged in a regular imbricated formation are conveyed, by means of a feed conveyor designed as a belt conveyor, to a receiving region arranged at the end of the belt conveyor. A conveying device with transporting clamps arranged at equal distances one behind the other on a drawing element leads past the end of the belt conveyor with an upward or downward slope. The conveying speeds of the belt conveyor and of the conveying device are co-ordinated with one another such that in each case two printed products fed are introduced into an open transporting clamp with their leading edges in front. The depth of the transporting clamps is greater than the distance between the leading edges of the printed products in the imbricated formation fed, with the result that the two printed products gripped by a transporting clamp can be gripped, and conveyed further, with their positioning relative to one another unchanged.
The depth of the transporting clamps thus has to be co-ordinated with the distance between the leading edges of the printed products. If it is intended, with the same distance between the leading edges, to grip more than two printed products using one transporting clamp, this requires transporting clamps of correspondingly larger design. In order to guarantee reliable introduction of the printed products into the transporting clamps, the feed conveyor and the conveying device have to be correspondingly co-ordinated with one another.
The object of the present invention is thus to provide a process of the generic type and an apparatus of the generic type in which said disadvantages are eliminated. Furthermore, the process and the apparatus according to the invention are intended to allow the articles to be conveyed around bends in the conveying surface thereof.
A single transporting clamp grips in each case at least two of the fed articles from one side. It is thus permissible to have considerable tolerances both in the distance between the leading edges of the articles in the imbricated stream fed and in the synchronization between the feed conveyor and the conveying device. A transporting clamp may receive a different number of articles as well as articles with different distances between the leading edges. All that is required is for each article to come to rest with a region in the active region of the transporting clamps. The articles which are secured relative to one another by a transporting clamp and form a section can also be moved in the conveying surface in relation to the leading and trailing sections; this allows the articles to be conveyedxe2x80x94while maintaining the overlapping of the sectionsxe2x80x94around bends, even in the plane or surface defined by the sections.
Preferred developments of the process according to the invention and embodiments of the apparatus according to the invention are specified in the dependent claims.